This article reclaims the dérive—a psychogeographic method of drifting through urban space—as a valuable pedagogical tool in architectural and urban education. Moving beyond its Situationist legacy, González, Salazar, and Urrea propose the dérive not only as a form of urban analysis, but as a means of re-enchantment that reawakens students’ embodied awareness and emotional connection to the city. Divided into theoretical exposition and applied case study from the National University of Colombia, the text emphasizes how dérives bridge rationality and intuition, science and play, catalyzing a sensorial pedagogy that counters the sterile instrumentalism of traditional urbanism. It critiques the dominant paradigms of planning—rooted in positivist rationalism and productivity-focused logics—by recovering urban wandering as a form of critical knowledge production. The dérive’s incorporation into academic practice becomes an act of resistance against the “city of capital and mobility,” advocating for an education that privileges affective immersion, narrative multiplicity, and situated perception. Through literature, art, and historical references—from Baudelaire’s flâneur to the Dadaists and Debord—the article frames the city not as an object to be mastered but as a living palimpsest to be explored, reinterpreted, and co-created. Ultimately, this pedagogical dérive repositions urban learning as an aesthetic, ethical, and political act, reinstating urban drifting as a method of both analysis and joy.
González Cárdenas, M. M., Salazar Ferro, C. and Urrea Uyabán, T. (2014) ‘Re-correr la ciudad’, URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 4(1), pp. 139–157.
